[MUD-Dev] Usability and interface

[clawrenc at cup.hp.com]

In <E0xDWo2-0007G1-00 at crucigera.fysh.org>, on 09/23/97 
   at 09:30 AM, Maddy <maddy at fysh.org> said:

>Previously, Caliban Tiresias Darklock wrote....

>I think locking spellbooks out of the hands of the masses is a good
>thing.  You don't want Bubba the barbarian who can barely add 2
>numbers together trying to cast magic do you?  Magic is best left to
>the professionals.  However having one consistant language for magic
>makes far more sense.

I forget the author, but I recall a series where every discipline and
area of magic had its own language.  This was more than, say, one
language for fire, one for water etc, but different languages for
every individual *study* of an area of magic.  Thus a particular
wizard who had studied say fire magic would have a particular language
unique to his fire magic -- which others could then learn and copy,
and if they duplicated his intonation, pacing, voice tones, and
magical touches could achieve the same effects.  A different wizard,
studying the same area, would have a different language, and his
spells would create more or less different effects.

This effectively made for an infinite number of languages, with each
language being a product of its author's physical characteristics (for
some languages you *had* to be fat for instance), and of the speaker's
magic character (which could, with sufficient skill) be controlled at
the time of incantation.

>I'd hope you don't walk down the street brandishing a sword, but it's
>what most people do in muds.

cf Island's concept of sin.

--
J C Lawrence                           Internet: claw at null.net
(Contractor)                           Internet: coder at ibm.net
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